The queen is gone, but she’s not forgotten
My wife Diana closed up her business after a beautiful ten-year run making the best ice cream in the world at MilkMade.
Since she announced she was shutting, I have also loved seeing all the ways in which she touched families, kids and was a part of so many lives in so many ways. From the long lines to people taking pilgrimages from far-off places to “MilkMade Mondays” to “I dreamed of my kids coming here; no point anymore of having any.”
I’ve never seen anyone work harder at their craft than she did. I got a front-row seat to seeing all the ups-and-downs of being a food business entrepreneur in New York City. The stories she could (and will) write someday!
I just made our latest batch of toasted hay ice cream. Yes, hay. Like for horses. Called Haunted Hayride, it is a toasted hay ice cream with gingersnap cookies and it is phenomenal. It has a naturally sweet and nutty taste which is perfectly complemented by the biting ginger and molasses of a gingersnap cookie. You must come and try it.
Toasted hay is perhaps my favorite flavor to make but also one that I dread the most. It’s inventive, it’s surprisingly delightful, and it’s fun to make. But it is such a process. It’s annoying, it’s time consuming, and it can be painful to make. It involves washing, sanitizing, and toasting small bundles of hay at a time. Then steeping and straining and hand-wringing cream out of the hay by the handful. It is, in the truest sense, a labor of love. And I do love it. But this was the last batch of hay ice cream that I’m going to make. Ever! Because MilkMade is closing.
Our shop will close on Sunday, November 3. Members of our ice cream subscription will receive our very last pints the following week, marking ten years since MilkMade’s launch in 2009.